"You should've made him sit," the older girl said angrily as she wrapped Kagome's ankle, wishing Kaede were back – Sango was a warrior, not a healer.
"I didn't have the heart to," Kagome replied with a weak laugh. Her hands were locked tightly at her sides gripping her chair as she swung her other leg in small, lazy circles in the air beneath her. The nervous gesture didn't go unnoticed.
"It would have made you feel better," Sango suggested as she tied off the bandage. "Sit, sit, sit, sit-"
"Haha, nah… we're not kids anymore," she sighed, staring out the window. "And I've realized, you know… It doesn't make either of us feel any better to hurt him back whenever he hurts me. It just…" she trailed off without finishing the thought.
Sango looked down at the girl's feet to hide her grimace. Sometimes Kagome was too old for her age, and she suspected most of it was Inuyasha's fault.
"Well, it would have made me feel better to see it, then," she said at last, grinning. "A nice deep hole like the grave that mutt keeps digging himself into."
At that, Kagome couldn't help but mirror Sango's grin. Their eyes met as they both pictured it and suddenly both women burst into uncontrollable giggles, pitching forward at the thought of the half demon's legs twitching in the air over a smoking sit-crater, laughing until both girls clutched their stomachs and Sango wiped tears from her eyes.
"Hic-" She looked up to see Kagome gritting her teeth as her smile broke apart and her chuckles dissolved into choking tears. She took the younger woman's hand, and the small kindness broke Kagome's resistance completely.
"…Kagome…" she didn't know what to say as tears began to slide down Kagome's cheeks in earnest. It was a fresh pain, but an old problem.
"I-" a rattling breath caught in her throat. "I can't hurt him the way he hurts me, anyway," she laughed. The sound squeezed Sango's chest. "Even if I wanted t-" she clenched her teeth back together, willing her tears to flow backwards and failing spectacularly. She felt warm arms quickly encircle her as she melted into quiet sobs.
She felt Kaede's power at the door, waiting for Kagome to regain control before rounding the corner.
"It-" Kagome closed her eyes and took a long breath, ordering her body to behave. "It's ok, Kaede," she said at last, rubbing her fists roughly across her eyes to little effect.
"What's all this, then?"
"Inuyasha just got back," Sango said in reply, still holding Kagome in a protective hug.
"Just Inuyasha?" the elder miko asked, puzzled. "Were ye not together in the other world?"
At this both girls turned to look at the woman, questioning looks on their faces.
"I spied him not an hour ago as I returned here," she added in answer. "He came from the Bone-Eater's Well."
—
Kagome stared down at the grave, and even in the last wisps of twilight she could see that the flowers were dead.
She'd planted them as a sign of goodwill to honor the sacrifice Kikyo had made in their battle against Naraku. Everyone deserved a place to be remembered, didn't they? Or so she'd thought at the time. She'd made a point of caring for the gravesite ever since, partly because Kikyo was Kaede's sister, and partly because she thought she'd forgiven the other woman.
Standing there now, she was no longer sure.
Kagome had neglected the plot lately, afraid she might encounter Inuyasha there mourning the priestess. Looking at the dry flower husks sticking out of the dirt beside Kikyo's headstone, she knew that her fears had been wasted.
But new worries quickly sprouted in their place.
"Kagome?" Miroku called out as he crested the top of the hill behind her. He was glad to see Kagome wasn't crying alone as Sango had suspected, but as the young priestess turned and he saw the look on her face, his relief evaporated. "What is it?" he asked darkly, tucking his chin as if warding off a blow. She didn't answer.
"You can talk to me, Kagome."
"Did he… tell you anything?" she asked at last, eyes downcast. "About where he's been, or what he's been…" she turned again to look meaningfully at the monument behind her, gleaming menacingly against the lamp light. "About what he's been doing?" she murmured.
The monk walked up to stand beside her, scrutinizing the grave for the new significance Kagome saw in it.
"No. Although…" he spoke hesitantly, picking his words like careful steps over what he new was dangerous territory. "Given the… state of things between you two… I thought it had something to do with Kikyo."
She nodded solemnly in reply.
"I think he's been looking for a way to revive her."
The monk turned at her words as if he'd been struck. Her expression remained placid.
No, he thought to himself, empty.
"You know lately he's been disappearing more and more on his own, right?" she continued, eyes still trained on the headstone.
It was an understatement. Inuyasha was gone often enough that the monk rarely saw him when he stopped to visit the village, and though his visits were becoming more and more frequent now that Sango needed Kaede's care on a regular basis, they encountered the half demon less and less.
"I've noticed," he acknowledged. She nodded again.
"He never tells me where he's going. And he only does that when-" she visibly steeled herself. "When he's running off with Kikyo." Miroku tensed, but couldn't think of anything to say. It had been too familiar of an occurrence over the years for any of them to suspect anything else.
"I thought it would stop when she died. I mean, I didn't think he would forget her or anything, but I thought…" she reached an arm across her body, clutching her opposite elbow as if she could support herself. "But then lately he started running off again. At first it was just a day at a time, but that look on his face… and I just… I just knew, you know? And I asked him about it, but he wouldn't…"
Miroku frowned sympathetically.
"It's possible he could be doing something else," he offered quietly, not sure whether he was trying to convince Kagome or himself.
"That he couldn't tell me about? What else could there be?" she said, finally turning to face the monk. "He tells me everything. He's always told me everything. Except…" she grimaced. "At first I thought he was just hanging around her grave, thinking about her. He used to do that a lot right after she died. Well, died again. But then he started staying away for days at a time, so I figured… he must be trying to get her back somehow."
"It wouldn't be much of a surprise if he were…" he conceded, "but how could he do it?"
"I don't know," she said, shaking her head to clear the image of the two together. "But it happened before, right? So I'm sure someone could do it again. Or I bet that's what he was thinking, at least."
Miroku couldn't argue with her reasoning. Still, he hoped his friend wasn't foolish enough to repeat what - for all intents and purposes - had been a disaster, no matter how he felt about the priestess.
"Still, before we have proof we shouldn't-"
"He's been going down the well."
"What?"
"I thought he was looking for a witch who could do a similar clay doll spell, but Kaede said he came out of the Bone-Eater's Well today."
"So is he looking for something in your time that could help him?"
"No, that can't be it. There's nothing there to help him."
"Then what-" and it dawned on him. She looked at him sadly as she saw the pieces line up in his mind. "You think he's going further back, not forward."
She looked away.
"It's the only thing that makes sense, right? Maybe… maybe while he was looking for a way to get Kikyo back, he found a way to get back to Kikyo instead. And not just the angry Kikyo we all know, but the real one, the one he fell-" she clenched her fist at her side, but staunchly refused to shed any more tears over the half-demon that day. "That would be better than reviving her, wouldn't it? To be with the living, breathing incarnation of Kikyo?" The monk couldn't help but hear a comparison in her words. Not for the first time, he wondered whether Kagome felt like Kikyo's replacement, and whether she indeed was. But Inuyasha's increased absence seemed to settle that question.
"I thought the well only went between your time and this one," he posited after the pause.
"That's what I used to think, too, but how do I know that? Just because that's the only way I've ever traveled through the well doesn't mean that's the only way it could work. I've been thinking about it," she said, shedding some of her gloom as she focused on the new theory. "Maybe I could go to a different time if I really wanted to." The monk didn't like the way she said 'wanted to'.
"How so?"
"Maybe the well takes me to the time I'm focusing on when I jump into it. I only ever have this time or my time in my mind when I go through the well. Maybe that limits what time I come out in on the other end."
"Then what of your first arrival?" The pair turned to see Sango helping Kaede up the stairs, and Miroku rushed to take Sango's arm.
"You shouldn't overexert yourself," he chastised softly. She immediately waved him off.
"Miroku, I'm pregnant, not crippled."
"Yes, but-" she silenced him with a look. He hung his head in defeat, and with a wry smile moved to help Kaede instead.
"I think… it was because of Mistress Centipede," she said when they were all together. "She died in this time, didn't she? Just a few days after where I landed. So maybe when we went through the well together, it was her thoughts of this time that brought me here. Or maybe I was just hoping to get somewhere safe, so the well took me to-" She paused, remembering the first thing she'd seen when she emerged from the well. Kaede remembered, too.
"Or mayhap ye had nothing to do with the choice, and in truth it's the well which decides the fates of those who enter it," Kaede said seriously, apprehension spreading quickly across her features.
The group exchanged a look.
"All this time that I've been using the well, I never stopped to worry about how it worked or what else it could do," Kagome mused, frowning.
"But apparently Inuyasha has," Sango added.
"Yes," Miroku said, "and whether he's looking to revive Kikyo or not, I think we can agree that using the power of the well for selfish desires can't end well. He could accidentally alter the course of time."
Kagome's frown deepened.
"He could change something that makes it impossible for us to defeat Naraku," she said to the others, staring at the ground. Their eyes flew wide.
"Do you think he… but he went further back than that, didn't he?" Sango ventured. "If he's going back to see a living Kikyo, he's going back to a time where Naraku didn't exist yet."
"Not quite so," Kaede replied. "My sister died because of the deception Naraku laid upon the pair of them. In a sense, his beginning was my sister's undoing."
"Exactly," Kagome said. "If he's going back to see Kikyo, then he's probably…" She clenched her jaw. "Instead of resurrecting her, he might be trying to undo her death in the first place." Her hold on her elbow visibly tightened, knuckles going white at the thought.
"You mean he's trying to kill Naraku?" Sango asked.
"Or Onigumo, more specifically," Miroku supplied.
"If that's what he's after, though, he hasn't succeeded yet." Something in the timbre of her voice drew the eyes of the group to Kagome.
"How can ye know?"
She clutched the scar on her side where the jewel had been ripped from her body.
"Because I still exist."
—
A/N:
WOOOOO! Sorry, guys, I was going to upload this yesterday, but Avengers 2 FINALLY came out in Japan, so I didn't have time to finish haha. Sorry there's no Sesshomaru in this chapter, too. But don't worry, there's going to be plenty of him from here on out. I've actually been shortening and even scrapping chapters as I re-read it to get to the SessKags stuff sooner haha (sorry not sorry).
To those of you AMAZING people who have been messaging me and following me and saying sweet things, thank you! I've been a part of this fandom for years now and I've never fully appreciated how warm and just generally awesome y'all are until now. You guys are the best! And whenever I get a message or a note about Clean it always makes me want to work on it faster. So thanks, guys!
For those of you who missed Chapter 1 or the beginning blurb, feel free to check those out.
xoxox,
Mana